Happy Halloween!

Today hasn't really been all that great, especially for Halloween. It's not bad, exactly, but nothing particularly good has happened.

The problems started last night when I managed to walk into a wall in the dark, bumping my face. Somehow I thought the doorway was located a bit to the right of where is actually was. No noticeable bruising or anything, but my nose is a little tender when I touch it. My yell of pain did not disturb my sleeping husband at all. I think he could sleep through anything.

Daily Saving Time is once again destroying whatever slight sense of time I had. I need to remember to reset the clock in my car, since once again we irrationally changed our timepieces by an hour. If I were a bit more energetic, I would link to one of my previous DST rants, but it is so dark right now (stupid clock changing!) that I just don't feel like doing much.

Work wasn't actually bad, but it didn't really have any high points. I take that back, lunch was tasty, since I remembered to actually pack something for a change (the last of the beef barley soup with mushrooms, a can of Citrus Drop, and a handful of Halloween chocolates).

I didn't interact with anyone at work today. There is a very loud talker in the office next to mine, so I eventually gave up and shut my door, which pretty much cut off all chances of casually chatting with people passing by. I've been trying to work out a tricky bit of design for a new feature and it just isn't coming together right. Again, not a really bad thing, but it would have been nice to start the week with even a small success.

My husband just called to remind me to come home and carve pumpkins before kids start knocking on our door. That should be fun. I think I may have to go pick out and hoard a bunch of the dark chocolate pieces for my own use.

Still no niece or nephew for me. I was hoping my sister would deliver today. Having Halloween for a birthday would be kind of cool. Besides, I would win bragging rights if the prediction I made at the baby shower actually was correct. If she has it tomorrow, my husband will get to gloat. Either way, our guesses are way closer than the impatient older members of the family that were predicting two weeks ago.

Okay, time to go home, play with pumpkin guts, and eat much candy.

A mystery is solved and 'Sulu' is gay

The past week or so I've been getting wrong numbers on my work phone, which is odd, since usually the only person who calls me there is my husband. When I ask what number they were trying to reach, they repeat my own number, so it isn't a clumsy misdialing. When I ask who they are trying to reach, the answer usually was Donna LastName or the Benefits department.

Ah-ha! There is a Donna in Benefits, so they must all be trying to reach the same place, and this is the time of year when we can make changes to our insurance plan, so that is why so many people are trying to reach that department, but why call my number? It isn't at all similar to the Benefits hotline, so it would be unlikely that the cause is a typo in a brochure somewhere. Most perplexing...

This afternoon, while redirecting some retired guy who accidentally called me, I figured it out. The local number he had ended with letters, without giving the corresponding digits. He also had a toll-free number written in the normal fashion. He, and many others, assumed that the letters in the local number corresponded to the numbers in the toll-free number and didn't bother looking at the letters on their telephone keypads. Unfortunately for me, the toll-free number shares the same final digits as my number. Mystery solved!

In other news, it turns out that George Takei is gay. I remember watching reruns of the original Star Trek series and having a bit of a crush on Sulu (right after Spock!). He has such a great voice. I have to admit, I'm not terribly surprised to learn that Takei is gay. Of course, I also would not have been shocked to learn that he is happily married with numerous offspring. I never gave his private life much thought before. I did find it interesting to read that he grew up in an interment camp. That is a part of American history that is often ignored, unless you watch a lot of PBS.

Fumblefingers!

I had to change my password here at work a few weeks ago, and I am still tripping over it. We have computer-generated passwords here, to keep people from choosing really stupid and obvious words. I've stopped accidentally typing last year's password, but I still mess up my current one several times a day. There is an awkward sequence in the middle that I keep getting wrong. I think I'm too quick with the shift key and capitalize a letter too soon. Awkward computer-generated password... *grumble*

I don't want a McMansion

My husband and I are starting to think about purchasing a house. I was talking to my father on the phone this evening and he recommended looking at Not So Big House to get some ideas about good residential design and help define what we are looking for.

Dawn of the knitted dead

Knitted Zombies! I am amused.

Stupid spammers!

Lately, whenever I post, I get at least one spam comment within minutes. Annoyed with this, I have enabled word verification for comments. I apologize for the inconvenience to any real people who would like to comment, but the spam is just too annoying.

Nice blog, come see my unrelated commercial webpage in a futile attempt to drive up the page rank.

Rotten eggs

This afternoon, there was some sort of chemical leak or spill in out building, which caused the place to smell of enough of sulfur that the cleared us all out for a while. Fortunately, it was a nice sunny day and I wasn't getting much done anyway (A server I use was down for maintenance.), so we just sat around chatting for a while until the building was deemed safe. Just part of the excitement of working at a lab, I guess. I still think it would be funny if it turned out someone left their lunch so long it went bad.

NaNoWriMo is coming!

Once again, I'm going to attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Let's hope I do better than last year.

You just can't make this stuff up!

Today at lunch, my coworkers and I were discussing the possibilities of implanted computing devices, mostly in a joking manner. One coworker mentioned a rather interesting location for an mp3 player, which he claimed he had read about recently. We all thought it sounded pretty silly, so this afternoon he emailed us the link. So, tell me, would you want musical breast implants?

Short updates

This morning I left a half-full can of Citrus Drop on the roof of my car as I drove to work. I reached down to my empty cupholder and realized that I must have forgotten about the can about five seconds before it fell over and rolled off with a clatter. If there hadn't been other traffic on that street, I likely would have stopped to retrieve it, but alas, it happened after I turned onto a major street.

This past weekend was fairly busy for us. We had some people over for games on Saturday and went to the Taos Wool Festival on Sunday. I'll try to remember to post a picture of my loot later.

My sister-in-law is flying in on Wednesday for a visit, so I probably should pick up my office clutter a bit before she arrives. I would just close the door, but my office holds the futon that doubles as our guest bed, so I need to at least clear that area enough to unfold it. I'll deal with that tomorrow after work.

I'm currently working on a pair of socks for my father, using yarn he selected when he visited in August. I've already completed a pair for my mom, and still have the socks I made for my sister and brother-in-law. I think my family may eventually just get a big box of socks from me in the mail.